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Monsters: An American Werewolf in London—A Werewolf can only be killed by someone he loves

This week’s movie was a mass of horror and comedy. Two boys, David and Jack, backpack through the English countryside and happen upon a tiny English pub with a host of strange folk. The weirdness is amplified when Jack cannot stop himself from asking about a pentagram on the wall. The pub goers reactions drove David and Jack into the night—on the full moon.

When the two are attacked by a werewolf, Jack is killed and the same weirdos shot the wolf and save David’s life—sort of. They all knew they had a werewolf problem, and that David would turn at the next full moon. So what do they do? They let him be taken off to a London hospital.

The next half of the movie takes place in the small confines of David’s hospital room. His buddy invades his nightmares and then haunts his wakings with warnings. Jack advises David to kill himself to stop the werewolf bloodline. This seemed to me to be a manifestation of David’s conscious—a representation of his survivor’s guilt.

Of course, the pretty nurse must fall in love with her crazy patient and take him home to stay with her! What else would a pretty nurse do, right? Just weird. However, for a horror movie from the 80’s, An American Werewolf in London, contained some impressive effects.

David transforms for the first time from man to werewolf in the nurses apartment—screaming very loudly, how didn’t anyone hear this? The transformation itself was quite a feat for a film of that year. It was detailed, and explicit.

The wolf goes on a bloody rampage through the city of London on the first night of the full moon. Six victims before the sun rises. And he heads back to the apparently in a frisky mood. Until, he sees the reports of the murders.

The movie had many comical parts! David can’t manage to get the police to arrest him.

He’s being stalked by his undead friend who then stages an intervention in a pornographic movie theater with the rest of his victims. Before night falls everyone in the theatre becomes a victim. I had to ask though, how long were these guys in there walking porn?? The wolf-man guy entered that theatre in the late morning/early afternoon, and remained there with the next victims the moon comes up?

Early in the film, David tells the nurse that a werewolf can only be killed by someone he loves—and that was how the movie ended. She cornered him, tried to talk to him while transformed, and he stops long enough to be shot and killed by police.n The end. Serious. I was’t really expecting that abrupt ending.

A few things, some stated earlier bugged me about the movie and the storyline. And here is another, it bugged me through out the movie. David is unconscious in the hospital for three weeks. His friend dead and buried back in New York. His parents attended Jack’s funeral but never show up in London to see if their son is okay?

Hey, mom of four boys here, and I call bullshit. No way your kid is out of the country, they get attacked, his traveling buddy killed and your ass isn’t on that plane and next to that bed in a heartbeat. Sorry. Then, he calls home and can’t get them on the phone. They didn’t even call when he was in the hospital? Unrealistic. It bugged me. I actually thought that was he was going to be killed by—not the nurse he knew for like a week.

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Jeannie Davide-Rivera

Jeannie is an award-winning author, the Answers.com Autism Category Expert, contributes to Autism Parenting Magazine, and the Thinking Person's Guide to Autism. She lives in New York with her husband and four sons, on the autism spectrum.

You’re right, the scene in the pub is bizarre. I always wondered why the locals just didn’t kill the werewolf ago. Maybe lycanthropy is viewed as some sort of local eccentricity to be tolerated? If they knew the guy, killing him would be a mercy. I dunno. I’m assuming that once David left their town, they figured he wasn’t their problem anymore…

Yeah, there were a lot of plot holes in the movie. It seems like its not love that kills werewolves so much as…well, I suppose anything could kill them. It wasn’t silver bullets the police loaded up with that ultimately took him down. It made me wonder why the town even had a werewolf problem. I mean they were able to dispatch of theirs in a matter of minutes, so why are they being haunted by a werewolf for all these centuries? I could almost see after David passing out one of the villagers being like “Huh…guess we should’ve tried this a long time ago, yeah?”

Like you said though, the effects were on par. The gore was pretty fantastic, and I thought the only parts that looked fake were occasionally the teeth looked a little too rubbery. Lots of people liked this movie it seems like, but for me, the effects were its only saving grace.

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